"The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many
shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a
circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime
change" in Iraq..."

May 26, 2004
FROM THE EDITORS
The Times and Iraq

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on
decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of
American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and
possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the
allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same
light on ourselves.

In doing so - reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war
and into the early stages of the occupation - we found an enormous amount of
journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate
reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly
extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy
information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed
in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger
information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as
it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and
seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand
unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining
the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many
shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a
circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime
change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public
debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners,
Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at
least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite
of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information
from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating
matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly
confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq.
Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for
misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations - in
part!
icular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual
reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more
complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging
reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing
scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed
against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on
dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles
that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some
cases, there was no follow-up at all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors
who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were trained and
biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been independently
verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who
described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations
of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground
wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as
recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that
American officials took that defector - his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri
- to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed to have
worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of their use for weapons
programs. It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be
unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the
administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our
readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says
Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the
aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for
the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from defectors but
from the best American intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it
should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness
of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were
buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration officials
were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear
intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged from power: "The first
sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a
subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in
an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were
revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned
Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when
the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy
Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on
Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into
Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of
War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A
scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more
than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical
weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members
of the team said."

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria
and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda - two claims that were then, and remain,
highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi
"scientist" - who in a later article described himself as an official
of military intelligence - had provided the justification the Americans had been
seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts to
verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online at http://www.nytimes.com/critique
. Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The New York
Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military affairs correspondent of
The Times, about the aluminum tubes report. Responding to the review's critique
of Iraq coverage, his statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of
such intelligence reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation,
to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting
aimed at setting the record straight.

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